Creativity is essentially divergent thinking. What the hell does that mean?
When you have more than one solution to a problem. If you come up with ideas for what to have for dinner. That’s divergent thinking.
If you are like me, creativity has seemed like this necessary but nebulous concept. I used to believe being creative was coming up with cool ideas. It’s actually not, the cool ideas and creativity are separate. Creativity is simply coming up with as many ideas as possible, good, bad, weird.
Then how do you have better ideas? You don’t. You stop judging your ideas and let them flow freely. Inevitably this will lead to more "out there” ideas. These ideas can then be filtered through your filter. I will go more in depth on this in a another letter. 🤖🤖
Why You are Creative
There are so many times in life where you don’t go with the first and best solution. You don’t converge to one workout routine, diet, job. You have multiple floating around in your head that you might want to try at some point.
In a way this means even in the most mundane things you have to be creative. I remember this one time me and my family were going to look for a movie the whole family could watch together. This is way harder than it seems. Eventually Jumanji: The Next Level was pitched, the one movie with the Rock where he does his smolder thingy. (Maybe that’s every movie with the Rock?)
Most of the family thought this was going to be another braindead movie where the Rock is the Rock, things happen, the end. We decided to look for more movies and after scrolling for what felt like an eternity. It’s like we all subconsciously agreed to just watch Jumanji knowing it probably wouldn’t be all that stimulating. (It wasn’t)
Watching a movie is supposed to be easy, so none of us felt the need to be creative. Yet, you have to be really creative to find a fun family movie. Especially when you have so many different temperaments in one family.
You are creative then, just by existing and having ideas?
Sort Of…
Creativity is like a muscle, use it or lose it. If you never try to come up with different solutions to something, or you always default to the first option that comes up, you are not being creative.
And this is where people who constantly use this muscle start differentiating themselves from those who don’t. You become more creatively jacked by thinking of multiple solutions to a problem. However weird and out there they are.
Doing art, writing, or any other creative hobby is just a natural way to be creative. Although you can do those hobbies and still not be creative.
Creativity is hard and takes awareness, this does not mean you shouldn’t be creative. There are many benefits and it doesn’t take much out of your normal day.
Why Should I Be Creative and How?
Creative people tend to be more happy, or happiness makes you more creative. Either way, it will boost your mood and make life more interesting and fun. It will directly benefit your career, whether what you do is creative in nature or not. (most fulling work is)
It will help you make more interesting mundane choices. You make about 35 000 decisions a day, that’s 245000 in just one week!! Imagine if 10 percent of those decisions were given more options? You might just discover that you are more lucky than you thought!
If we were to be a bit more practical and your goal was to improve your creativity, what would you do?
I personally believe in sketching as the fast track method to do it but, this is hardly feasible for most. Sketching really isn’t as fun when you don’t have a basic grasp of the fundamentals. (The difficulty for learning the fundamentals of sketching is very overrated, but that’s a topic for another day)
Here are some simple ways to become more creative:
Notice something new in your environment, just the act of looking for something you don’t usually look for will help your creativity.
Think of something you know well. Make multiple what if scenarios: I.e. What if grass was purple? (I will have you know I don’t touch grass all that much since I am allergic…)
Do something you usually don’t do. Walk a different way home, eat a new dish. Watch a movie completely out of character for you. (Maybe watch that one recommendation that a friend gave you 2 years ago?)
You could write. Writing helps you examine your ideas, have more ideas and help you understand the ideas you have. It has it’s own plethora of benefits too.
Thanks for reading!
Suhayb, Neunetic 🤖🤖
Ps: I am working on a comic, will come more information soon. The title is: Glitch From the Machine, sci-fi, that’s my shtick ya know!
Pss: If you disagree with my definition of creativity, tell me why. One rule though, you have to come up with multiple definitions of creativity 😎😎